Recruiting bouncing back in communications industry

A new LinkedIn study shared exclusively with The Drum suggests that despite the pandemic and its economic consequences, opportunities in the marketing sector are only expanding, with roles in digital and media leading. While the economic impact of covid-19 has decimated businesses of all types over the last year and a half, the marketing industry has made an impressive comeback.

By Romanita Oprea

Seniors are in high demand and the companies are putting a great emphasize on strategy

Some 381,000 marketing job openings were posted on LinkedIn in the last year. In the past six months alone, the site saw a 63 percent increase in marketing jobs. Within the last six months, jobs in the arts (up 85.9 percent), retail (up 72.6 percent), education (up 63.7 percent), and corporate services (up 60.6 percent) grew the most. This is likely indicative of the recovery of sectors that were initially most impacted by lockdown orders and restrictions on in-person gatherings.

“Demand for marketing jobs has grown over the last six months because of the increased importance of marketing during the pandemic,” says Connie Chen, LinkedIn senior insights analyst. “Digital marketing gives organisations the ability to accurately target audiences, measure impact, and get in front of consumers during a time where the average adult is online more than ever. As the majority of the country’s workforce was sent to work from home, customers’ desire for digital experiences skyrocketed. This, in turn, has provided marketers with more heightened visibility in their companies and stronger positions to provide strategic direction as new opportunities crop up.” One in every two top marketing jobs listed on LinkedIn fall into the digital or media space. By volume of job postings on LinkedIn, the most desired marketing job is a digital marketing specialist.

Year-over-year growth patterns evidence the highest growth in skills including Instagram (up 72 percent), content marketing (up 63 percent), creative problem solving (up 45 percent), brand awareness (up 41 percent), branding (up 41 percent), and Hootsuite (up 39 percent). Other fast-growing skills include Adobe Premiere Pro, marketing automation, customer experience, and Facebook marketing. Since the onset of the pandemic, listings for remote marketing jobs have increased fivefold. Whereas just 2 percent of marketing roles were remote on March 1, 2020, today nearly one in ten are. In the past six months alone, LinkedIn has seen a 177 percent increase in the number of remote job postings for marketing roles. Marketing roles across the board are shifting to more remote and flexible working arrangements.

The past year saw 17,000 remote marketing job postings, highlighting the fundamental evolution of work, and this evolution stands to be a game-changer.

Over 90,000 Romanians applied for a job in February through the BestJobs platform, with over 511,000 recorded requests. Most of them came from industries such as IT&C, telecom, sales, finance-accounting, engineering, management, and construction. What is interesting to notice is the fact that a significant growth in the available fields of work included marketing, with 102,600 applications. The situation comes after a globally confusing 2020, when some areas of the communication industry were hit very hard, while others grew. The global ad market plunged, with dire predictions that UK ad expenditure dropped 16 percent in 2020 and some companies making savage cuts. WPP, Omnicom, and Dentsu each lost 6,000 posts globally last year.

IN SEARCH OF PERFORMANCE

the number of advertised jobs around the world decreased by 50-70 percent. Talent acquisition leaders had to optimise their expenditures and switch from the traditional pay-per-post mode to pay-for-performance channels. Due to substantial budget cut-off, more companies switched to the lowest-risk marketing models.

According to Jooble data, job board markets have been recovering in most countries. For example, over the last 6 months, the share of paid jobs in G7 countries has risen by almost 15 percent. Among the leaders are the United States, Germany, and Italy with nearly 30 percent, 17 percent, and 15 percent respectively. Marketing is often one of the first teams within a company to take a hit when a financial crisis strikes, and the covid-19 pandemic was no different in that regard. But with the economy now almost entirely reopened, the sector has bounced back to growth, with recruiters reporting a substantial rise in the number of marketing opportunities available.

Even the most hard-hit areas of the marketing industry have experienced recovery, with Marketing Week reports showing that salaries in the industry are set to bounce back in 2021 as vacancies rise and many recruiters struggle with more roles than there are candidates to fill them. David Nobbs, Managing Partner and Head of Consumer at executive search firm Grace Blue, spoke to the publication about this latest trend in talent acquisition. According to the analysis, salaries have met, and often increased on, pre-pandemic levels, especially when it comes to more senior positions that are vacant. This is in addition to firms struggling to retain talent as the pandemic eases and the economy rebounds. Nobbs explains that it is “not uncommon” for recruiters to offer up to a 50 percent pay increase to help retain senior individuals in their current roles and help stem the current wave of resignations witnessed across multiple sectors.

There was a 302 percent rise in opportunities for marketers on the UK market in the six months to August 2021 compared to the same period last year, according to data gathered for Marketing Week by job site Reed.

“The pandemic-driven recession may have stunted the evolution of some talent marketers because the labour market is again rich with candidates who are actively looking for jobs. Budgets may get pulled back to accommodate for the fact that there's more people actively looking on the labour market than there have been in years. And when budgets contract, that most commonly translates to ‘stick with what you know.’ E-commerce and fulfilment are competitive markets, so the war for that talent will drive the adoption of more sophisticated approaches,” recruitics. com wrote.

GROWTH AREAS

According to astoncarter.com, the pandemic has not only increased the importance of digital marketing for businesses; it has also fostered a surge in marketing and creative job opportunities across many industries. As companies are ramping up their digital marketing efforts, the job market for marketing and creative professionals is booming. Companies are looking to fill a wide range of marketing and digital roles across all levels. Some of the most in-demand marketing and creative roles in 2021 include copywriters, digital media managers, email marketing specialists, graphic designers, marketing analytics managers, search engine optimization (SEO) specialists, social media coordinators, and UX/UI designers.

Now that companies are increasingly valuing their creative teams, marketing and creative professionals are in a strong position to use their skills and experience as key differentiators when negotiating higher salaries, benefits or workplace preferences (such as flexible work schedules or remote work opportunities). Marketing and creative professionals should focus on building digital communication tools for customers across a broad spectrum of industries. For example, within financial services, companies are looking for creatives to develop new ways to connect with customers virtually and personalise user experiences on their digital platforms. Mobile apps are proving to be a highly effective channel for engaging with customers, and they are expected to generate over USD 935 billion in revenue by 2023.

There is also a very important trend in the rise of freelancers and remote work, especially in the communication industry. A recent Gartner poll showed that 48 percent of employees will likely work remotely at least part of the time after covid-19 versus 30 percent before the pandemic. According to Eurostat, Romania had over 1.2 million free-

lancers in 2020, mostly from the IT sector (36 percent) or marketing and creative industries (29 percent) – and numbers are growing.

As organisations shift to more remote work operations, they must explore the critical skills employees will need to collaborate digitally and be prepared to adjust employee experience strategies. They also need to consider whether and how to shift performance goal-setting and employee evaluations for a remote context. On a global market of independent platforms for freelancers estimated at over three billion dollars in 2020 (according to the Freelancers’ Association), the LANCERIA project, the first freelance marketplace in Romania developed on blockchain technology has officially been launched publicly, in an alpha version. Only five months since the start of this innovative project, Lanceria. com comes to support the community of those who work on their own by eliminating or minimising fees and commissions and by introducing the option of hybrid payments – in RON or foreign currency (FIAT) as well as in cryptocurrencies.

Bucharest AI co-founders: Romanian AI startups must think big, start small, fail fast

Ioana Irimia and Alexandra Petrus, co-founders of Bucharest AI, have launched the second edition of the #BeAI pre-accelerator, which awaits deep tech startups to sign up by early October. They talked to Business Review about Romania’s competitive advantages in the AI space and the factors that Romanian AI startups depend on for rapid growth.

By Ovidiu Posirca

Ioana Irimia & Alexandra Petrus, Bucharest AI

How did you decide to create Bucharest AI and what have been the results so far?

Ioana: Bucharest AI was born in a regional and global context that was inspired by City. ai’s efforts and initiatives across the globe. As innovative technologies began to exit labs and were being delivered to end consumers, we felt the need to share more know-how and intelligence in this space. The easiest, fastest, and most efficient way to learn from others is to do so as part of a community. It felt natural to build this community to cover a need in our own professional lives.

Our community has around 3,000 members and it is positioned regionally and globally. Each event reaches around 10,000 people via various channels. Last year’s AI pre-accelerator Demo Day gathered an AI audience of 1,000 people. As part of the local “Elements of AI Romania” initiative, around 5,000 people joined the Intro to AI course.

The #BeAI pre-accelerator is a unique opportunity for exceptional people in the region who want to grow alongside their idea and build an incredible AI-infused product while learning from the best and gaining access to essential information, technologies, and a network of experts in the field.

It is essential for AI startups to make the right choices early on and to be part of an AI ecosystem and network of practitioners to whom they can turn each time they’re in doubt.

What’s the state of the AI startup industry in Romania and how are investors approaching this field?

Ioana: It's nice that AI adoption is ramping up. Techcelerator mapped the ecosystem and found 100 AI startups in Romania, while Tracxn displays around 75 AI startups in the country. Both people in the industry and investors are surprised and excited when they see how many different AI technologies they could use to improve their processes, products/services, and ultimately their overall business. Investing in AI startups or businesses that leverage AI in their tech stack is a hot topic. Investors learned their lesson from 4-5 years ago and now they tend to carry out proper technical due diligence alongside business due diligence to assess whether they should invest in a business.

A bit of history: we’ve seen AI taking industries like transportation and manufacturing by storm and having direct impact on business KPIs such as reducing time to delivery by identifying the best route, defect detection, and so much more. In essence, computer vision and machine learning have turned these worlds around. Then we saw the RPA market being strongly shaped by the Romania-born and now globally scaled UiPath, with their unmatched growth and market fit. For Romanians, such an example has a strong impact, as we see a local business in a global context shaping a niche and driving change.

How is an AI startup different in terms of team structure and time needed to develop new products?

Alexandra: Internet-first companies had three major things in common: A/B testing, short iteration time, and decision-making being pushed down to engineers and PMs or other roles. AI-first companies have four things in common: strategic data acquisition, unified data warehouse, pervasive automation, and new roles (ML Eng., AI PM, etc.) and division of labour.

When we look at a team structure, a typical AI startup has roles like AI/ML/NLP/CV Engineer, Data Scientist or AI Product Manager. That comes on top of a classic structure of Business Development, Frontend/Backend Engineering or Marketing. Depending on the domain of the AI startup, there’s also a domain expert - technical expert partnership. The best products are built through such partnerships, where science and intelligence are mixed with domain expertise and problems. It is important to mention that AI is evolving so fast that job titles and various responsibilities are not yet fully defined. Getting started with AI as a startup can be done with a small team as well: a software engineer and a ML engineer/data scientist may be enough.

What sort of challenges are founders in Romania facing when it comes to recruiting staff and securing funding?

Alexandra: In the current remote-first context, which has been adopted by so many in the tech space, I would say that founders regarding the local AI market, tech investments reached 60 deals (worth EUR 31 million) in 2020, up from 40 deals in 2019, while seed funding reached EUR 22 million. However, Romania is still facing several significant challenges in creating a sustainable growth environment for startups, including those in the AI field, and lacks a national AI strategy to ensure strategically targeted public sector support for startups and R&D in sectors where the country has a competitive advantage and that could be further developed through AI.

have the opportunity of a lifetime right now, in terms of both recruitment and securing funding. Location/geography is no longer an aspect we look at as a limitation. As remote work becomes the norm , AI startups have a sizable opportunity to tap into the pool of talent available out there. Working for a startup and being part of a mission with which you resonate is an attractive option for many bright minds in the AI space. Romanian AI startups must be prepared to think big, start small, and fail fast.

Where I do see some potential danger to AI startups succeeding and remaining profitable is in AI regulations, like the AI Law recently proposed by the European Parliament. That is something we should keep an eye on.

Limited funding in pre-seed or seed investment rounds is more easily accessible now than it’s ever been. There is an increased European investment focus towards AI startups that are building a name for themselves by moving fast and disrupting industries.

I’d like to highlight ways in which we can build more talent in this space. I’ve been speaking about the lack of support and funds towards universities, compared do what there is in the US or China. We cannot start this conversation without mentioning the fundamental need, which is providing more support to universities, so we can ultimately have better prepared professionals. AI communities play a role as well, and we are happy to contribute to strengthening the AI ecosystem.

How competitive is Romania’s AI market compared to other countries in the region?

Ioana: The strengths of the Romanian AI market lie in the country’s expanding IT talent pool, a booming IT sector, relatively cheap operating costs for firms, and strong ITC connectivity, to only mention a few. According to estimates by Horvath & Partners What’s your advice for founders who are just launching their own startups?

Alexandra: Think big, start small, fail fast. This is the easiest and most efficient piece of advice that covers a lot of ground.

There is still a lot of room for AI startups to gain an advantage ahead of larger companies. They just need to find that space and keep an eye on the IP and AI regulations that

are being coined out there, while focusing on solving problems and their target audience. Their north star metric should always be the time to value of what they bring to their customers. If they cannot identify it or make a constant and real difference in time to value, things get rough, even if investment may come, as AI seems to be a very hot target for investment.

With many Romanians having a strong mathematics and software development background, failing to focus on delivering for the target group attached to the problem, and delivering only for yourself, is a common issue. Customer-backwards thinking is always a good idea.

Pandemic economy boosts local proptech niche

Investments in digitalization made by real estate players of all sizes have been growing in the pandemic context as entrepreneurs developing property technology (proptech) solutions have been gaining clout in the eyes of investors and consumers.

By Ovidiu Posirca

There is growing investment in VR technologies for property assets

The digital leasing platform developed by Bright Spaces is already being used by some of the largest developers in Romania, including the likes of Skanska and One United Properties. The startup raised EUR 1.5 million last summer and is planning to expand across Europe. Its platform allows building owners to use 3D visualisation to provide a complete picture of their available spaces.

INFUSING TECH IN A BILLION-EURO INDUSTRY

Proptech is gaining momentum as real estate companies are starting to deploy technology for a wide range of operations, ranging from coordinating sales teams to managing smart buildings and boosting the pool of potential leasers or buyers of office and residential assets. Despite the health crisis, investments in Romania’s commercial real estate sector totalled close to EUR 1 billion in 2020, making it one of the best years of the past decade.

“Real estate companies are starting to make headway in their innovation and technology adoption, but the difficulties around implementation and the lack of development across the business, which results from single-point adoption, suggest that many are not going about this in an organised manner,” Marius Nicolae, head of technology, strategy, and transactions at professional services firm EY Romania, tells BR.

Dan Flesariu, head of real estate transactions, strategy and transactions at EY Romania, adds: “As generation shifts become more apparent, the pace of adoption of Proptech solutions accelerates. It may look slow now, but acceleration is already evident. Real estate is less and less about concrete and steel, and more and more about facilities and convenience.”

Proptechs in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), including Romania, are focusing on the office segment, with 65 percent of startups deploying their products in this vertical, particularly in Architecture and Project Management services, property consultancy CBRE notes in its European Proptech Guide.

“All these investments are pushing the local market into a more competitive space. Yes, local players will feel the need to be increasingly agile. That means having fast but high-quality processes (in planning, sales & marketing, but also in post-sales) and make quick, data-driven decisions. And that's the space in which startups can innovate,” says Adrian Erimescu, saints keeper at local angel investment platform Growceanu.

In terms of technology, machine learning, big data, and the internet of things (IoT) are being used intensively by emerging startups that are crunching massive amounts of data being generated by buildings and by users who are looking to buy homes or lease spaces.

Virtual and augmented reality tools were used by residential developers during lockdowns to help potential buyers find the right home. Specialists say that the digitalization of property companies will continue down the road at a steady pace, though the process has been accelerated by the pandemic over the past 16 months.

Nicolae of EY Romania says that the proptech industry is lacking fully integrated end-to-end solutions. However, there is growing investment interest in technology solutions that facilitate digital leasing, spaces visualisation (AR/VR technologies), data and

device management (IoT/CCTV), and online platforms for property transactions.

“But in order to cover all real estate needs, from construction to building management, there is still plenty of space in the area of construction technologies, tenant experience or systems automation that could lead to the creation of new startups,” Nicolae adds.

Developers are among the users of proptech solutions, but property investors may also get on board with promising early-stage startups. This was the case with the founders of Speedwell, who made angel investments and became shareholders of Romanian startup Sigtree.

The developer has a portfolio worth EUR 400 million across office, residential, and mixed-use schemes in Bucharest and regional cities. Speedwell plans to implement Sigtree’s platform – designed to optimise property management, tenant engagement, and helpdesk services – in all its projects. The Speedwell founders made the investment following a one-year collaboration with Sigtree’s founding team.

Currently, the startup is looking to raise EUR 500,000 on crowdfunding platform Seedblink, in a bid to add new features to its platform and expand internationally. Sigtree’s platform is already operational in 25 office buildings and 1,500 apartments.

Milluu is another local startup that raised close to EUR 900,000 on SeedBlink to grow its digital property management platform. Its app matches landlords and tenants and helps them remotely manage all operational matters ranging from contracts to payments of utility bills.

REMOTE WORK COULD SPUR PROPTECH INNOVATION

Large companies have remained cautious about asking their employees to return to office buildings in droves, while smaller employers have had more room for maneuver and have been able more easily agree to different work arrangements. This is not only happening in Romania, but also in other European countries where health risks are still present. A survey carried out by Urbanite Advisors found that the consensus on 2 or 3 days of remote working per week will further that has adopted a policy which provides a glimpse into working arrangements for the next year. The company’s employees will stay at home for two days per week for individ-

drive the adoption of agile workplaces. However, CEE-based cities are less impacted by post-covid office contraction. The findings came from respondents in local and international firms representing an estimated total of 15 million sqm of office occupancy. “The shift

to remote working has been a global workplace experiment, and many see today’s pilot practices being adopted permanently. If employees manage to find effective workspace at home with minimal family distractions and have fast and reliable connectivity and digital tools, then remote working is a win for both employers and employees,” says Nicolae of EY Romania.

The risks generated by the ongoing pandemic are feeding a big dose of uncertainty into any plans that companies may be drawing up regarding the way in which they work. For example, BNP is one large employer ual work and virtual collaboration and will spend one day in regional/satellite offices to socialise and continue individual work. The remaining two days will be spent at the core office for team projects. Many companies will need space-sharing and resource-sharing applications tailored to their specific business, and some of their modules might need some degree of integration with the building’s systems, suggests Flesariu of EY Romania. Taking a bike or an electric scooter to get to a co-working space quickly could turn out to be the best solution for employees who previously worked in large office buildings. In urban areas, mobility startups have been building their vehicle fleets for years to meet projected demand increases. Changes in the way Romanians approach the workspace will not appear overnight, but startups will have growing clout in the way people adapt to new work arrangements.

Erimescu of Growceanu concludes that the booming local real estate scene also gives startups the opportunity to more easily identify relevant problems and then raise money to solve them.